|
These reflections should show that there is nothing strange in
that reduction of all souls to one. But it is still necessary to
enquire into the mode and conditions of the unity.
Is it the unity of origin in a unity? And if so, is the one
divided or does it remain entire and yet produce variety? and how
can an essential being, while remaining its one self, bring forth
others?
Invoking God to become our helper, let us assert, that the very
existence of many souls makes certain that there is first one
from which the many rise.
Let us suppose, even, the first soul to be corporeal.
Then [by the nature of body] the many souls could result only
from the splitting up of that entity, each an entirely different
substance: if this body-soul be uniform in kind, each of the
resultant souls must be of the one kind; they will all carry the
one Form undividedly and will differ only in their volumes. Now,
if their being souls depended upon their volumes they would be
distinct; but if it is ideal-form that makes them souls, then all
are, in virtue of this Idea, one.
But this is simply saying that there is one identical soul
dispersed among many bodies, and that, preceding this, there is
yet another not thus dispersed, the source of the soul in
dispersion which may be thought of as a widely repeated image of
the soul in unity- much as a multitude of seals bear the
impression of one ring. By that first mode the soul is a unit
broken up into a variety of points: in the second mode it is
incorporeal. Similarly if the soul were a condition or
modification of body, we could not wonder that this quality- this
one thing from one source- should be present in many objects. The
same reasoning would apply if soul were an effect [or
manifestation] of the Conjoint.
We, of course, hold it to be bodiless, an essential existence.
5. How then can a multitude of essential beings be really one?
Obviously either the one essence will be entire in all, or the
many will rise from a one which remains unaltered and yet
includes the one- many in virtue of giving itself, without
self-abandonment, to its own multiplication.
It is competent thus to give and remain, because while it
penetrates all things it can never itself be sundered: this is an
identity in variety.
There is no reason for dismissing this explanation: we may think
of a science with its constituents standing as one total, the
source of all those various elements: again, there is the seed, a
whole, producing those new parts in which it comes to its
division; each of the new growths is a whole while the whole
remains undiminished: only the material element is under the mode
of part, and all the multiplicity remains an entire identity
still.
It may be objected that in the case of science the constituents
are not each the whole.
But even in the science, while the constituent selected for
handling to meet a particular need is present actually and takes
the lead, still all the other constituents accompany it in a
potential presence, so that the whole is in every part: only in
this sense [of particular attention] is the whole science
distinguished from the part: all, we may say, is here
simultaneously effected: each part is at your disposal as you
choose to take it; the part invites the immediate interest, but
its value consists in its approach to the whole.
The detail cannot be considered as something separate from the
entire body of speculation: so treated it would have no technical
or scientific value; it would be childish divagation. The one
detail, when it is a matter of science, potentially includes all.
Grasping one such constituent of his science, the expert deduces
the rest by force of sequence.
[As a further illustration of unity in plurality] the
geometrician, in his analysis, shows that the single proposition
includes all the items that go to constitute it and all the
propositions which can be developed from it.
It is our feebleness that leads to doubt in these matters; the
body obscures the truth, but There all stands out clear and
separate.
|
|